[Yesterday I linked to
Armin Rosen's piece about the big
New Yorker postelection symposium, in which the liberal essayists blame the corruption of the American electorate for Trump's 2024 victory. Rosen writes:
Quote:
Some of the greatest minds in America have gathered in the pages of the country's leading weekly to declare how little they understand things now, and how little they care to understand them moving forward.
How honest are we about our ignorance? How honest do we want to be? In answer to that eternal question, which isor should beof particular interest to reporters, the 20-page,
12-essay onslaught of postelection "dispatches" that dominates the latest issue of
The New Yorker is one of the most honest pieces of magazine publishing we are likely to ever see. Some of the greatest minds in America have gathered in the pages of the country's leading weekly to declare how little they understand things now, and how little they care to understand them moving forward.
"Stunningly, Trump fared better in New York City this year than he did in 2020,"
writes Jelani Cobb, which is frankly a stunning assessment coming from the dean of the Columbia Journalism School, given Trump's marked improvement in the five boroughs in 2020 and the obvious and extensively documented rightward shift across the metro region over the past decade. "How could Americans be such nice and decent people and support someone so debasing, so deranged, so hate-filled [as Donald Trump]?"
asks Adam Gopnik, who makes no attempt to answer these questions, though he clearly wants to be seen as a thoughtful person for asking them.]